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The One Border Question Dems Can’t Answer

February 12, 2024

Conservative Republicans have managed to defeat the fake border security bill wrapped in a political ploy inside of a Ukraine bailout bill. Of course, no Republican should have ever imagined that giving open-border Democrats everything they asked for was a smart strategic position, but that’s what they very nearly did.

Republicans had already passed a real border security bill within a few months of taking control of the House of Representatives following the 2022 midterm elections. HR-2 actually secured the border – by demanding that the Biden administration finish the border wall, ending Biden’s power to process aliens who don’t enter at ports of entry, and shutting off the federal spigot that funds NGOs who aid and abet illegal aliens (“inadmissible non-U.S. citizens”) by providing lodging and other resources.

Moreover, HR-2 shut down the ability of the Biden administration to grant asylum to the millions of migrants who don’t meet the legal criteria for asylum. But those are just a few of the vital components of HR-2, which is indeed a border security bill.

If Democrats really wanted border security, they would have passed HR-2 in the Senate last year. But even if they didn’t want to give Republicans a win with HR-2, Democrats still could have incorporated the language of HR-2 in their grand compromise to prove that they really meant it when they said they wanted to stop the flow of illegal immigrants into the United States.

Instead, Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell teamed up with his buddy Chuck Schumer to use their fake border security bill as a fig leaf to cover up their real goal – freeing billions of dollars to go to Ukraine and Israel.

McConnell sent his sacrificial lamb, Sen. James Lankford of Oklahoma, into the lions’ den of lean and hungry Democrats as his chief negotiator to craft a “compromise” border bill, but he was apparently instructed not to involve House Speaker Mike Johnson or any other border hawks in his negotiations. Moreover, the contents of the bill were kept secret until three days before Schumer intended to bring it to a vote in the Senate.

By that time, it was obvious what the game was. Democrats and their media allies created a narrative that Trump had ordered Republicans to vote against the bill in order to give him a political issue in November. This is just the latest instance where Democrats have gotten the cart before the horse. Trump does not give anyone orders; he just listens to the people and provides them a voice. It is the people who spoke out against this fake border bill, and any Republicans foolish enough to vote against the people are at risk of following former Speaker Kevin McCarthy out the door.

The people’s voice was mocked throughout the process. When details of the border bill were leaked to the media, Lankford characterized them as Internet rumors and dismissed them. “Wait for the text of the bill to be released,” he repeatedly said.

But when the text was released, it was just as the people had feared. Most importantly, the centerpiece of the bill was a provision that ordered the president to shut down the border if illegal entries exceeded 5,000 a day on average for seven days. Our masters in the media tell us that doesn’t mean up to 5,000 illegal entries per day would be allowed, but let’s be realistic.

First of all, the U.S.-Mexican border is not controlled by the Border Patrol; it is controlled by the Mexican cartels. If the human traffickers need to keep border crossings under 5,000 a day in order to keep doing business, then they will do just that.

But there is one question that completely destroys the Democrat and globalist Republican talking point that the “5,000 a day” number is somehow being misunderstood by Harvard Law School graduates like Sens. Ted Cruz and Tom Cotton.

Here’s how NBC described the provision:

“DHS could close the border if Border Patrol encountered 4,000 or more migrants on average over seven days. The border would have to be shut down if those encounters reached a seven-day average of 5,000 or if they exceeded 8,500 in a single day.”

Now, here’s the question that Democrats have no answer to: If the border can be shut down when more than 5,000 illegal immigrants cross per day, then why can’t it be shut down immediately, right now?

The answer is obvious – because Joe Biden and the Democrats don’t want to shut down the border. Instead, they have sanctioned the invasion of our country by millions of non-citizens. With this bill, they attempted to codify that invasion and they thought they could get Republicans to just look the other way. Maybe a few years ago, that would have worked. But this is the new Republican Party, tired of playing Charlie Brown and being humiliated time and again by Democratic Party Lucys.

If you need more evidence that the Senate bill is the opposite of what Sen. Lankford claims, get this:

According to NBC, “The border couldn’t be shut down … for more than 270 days in the first year. And the bill would give the president the power to suspend a border closure ‘on an emergency basis for up to 45 days if it is in the national interest.’”

Under what possible justification would these supposed proponents of border security allow the border to remain open to invaders for the other 95 days a year? Under the typical scenario of 10,000 border crossers per day under Biden, that would allow nearly 1 million illegal crossings per year. Add that to 4,000 crossers a day allowed for 270 days per year under Lankford’s bill, and you are authorizing at least 2 million migrants to enter the country and stay indefinitely, and that’s just between ports of entry. Remember, the bill doesn’t account for the people who show up at airports and border crossings and demand asylum.

Perhaps the craziest admission that the border bill is a con job is that Orwellian provision that Biden could open the border on an emergency basis “if it is in the national interest.”

It is never in the national interest to replace the border with a sign proclaiming, “Welcome Stranger. Mi Casa Es Su Casa.” But apparently, it is in the interests of the Democratic Party. Think about that, and stop blaming Republicans for refusing to be duped one more time.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.

Frank Miele, the retired editor of the Daily Inter Lake in Kalispell, Mont., is a columnist for RealClearPolitics. His newest book, “What Matters Most: God, Country, Family and Friends,” is available from his Amazon author page. Visit him at HeartlandDiaryUSA.com or follow him on Facebook @HeartlandDiaryUSA or on Twitter or Gettr @HeartlandDiary.

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